Twitter Takeover By Google Or Facebook

When we first heard about the concept of Twitter about five years ago, we have to admit that we never thought it would take off. Reports today that Google and Facebook are once again seeking to purchase the Blue Bird company for up to $10 billion proves just how wrong we were.

Twitter has grown from humble beginnings to have currently having 175 million tweeters who produce 95 million tweets every single day. However, despite the number of dedicated Twitterers out there growing on a daily basis, the company is not really making any money as it attempts to keep up with the demand for micro-blogging site. This however has not prevented the company being valued at $3.7 billion only last December or – if reports in the Wall Street Journal are to be believed – internet giants Google and Facebook from trying to purchase it - again.

We've seen many rumours previously of attempts by Facebook, Google and even Apple to buy Twitter but nothing has come of them. According to the WSJ though, execs from both Facebook and Google, among other companies, have held low-level talks – we presume that doesn’t mean they were sitting on the ground – with Twitter in recent months to look into the possibility of an acquisition. According to people “familiar with the matter” these talks have so far been fruitless. These same people tell the WSJ that the money being talked about is in the region of $8 - $10 billion. That’s up to £6.2 billion for a company which had a revenue of just over £28million last year – most of which went up in smoke after investment in more data centres and personnel.

The prospect of being able to mine the advertising potential of 175 million active users is clearly driving the huge increase in valuation of Twitter, however the full potential of this is, as yet, unknown. The WSJ goes on to say that the Promoted Trends advertisement product which Twitter introduced last year has been selling out its inventory every day with Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts also doing “brisk business.”

Whatever the future for the micro-blogging site, it seems as if its valuation is unlikely to go down any time soon with numerous suitors combined with growing participation making it the hottest property on the internet at the moment.

jingyeow

February 10, 2011, 11:05 pm

but why do Americans write dates that operate in neither an ascending or descending order?

I mean why structure it Month/Day/Year?

It really confuses me when I see a date like 05/06. Does that mean 6th May or 5th of June? Okay I can work out 4/15, but honestly, why be so difficult?

Year/Month/Day or Day/Month/Year

Jones

February 11, 2011, 12:41 am

Enjoyed the mini rant darkspark!

Normally I wouldve thought this was a complete joke regarding Twitter's value but having recently read, and been convinced by, an article in Wired magazine about the future of advertising (basically based around &quot;recommendations&quot; from friends&quot;) i can quite believe that their revenue streams (along with Facebooks) will rocket.

jingyeow

February 11, 2011, 3:59 am

@Jones - Americans do have some terrible ideas though...and I needed to get that off my chest in a forum where people might care :)

Anyway, I too have read interesting things about the future of advertising and branding and its getting out of the control of business, who have to learn to shape it and utilise social media not just as the role of customer support or the marginalised domain of the cool teenager, but as a genuine channel to address user concerns, aspirations and mood in super quick time. Something we know companies are not generally great at.

I'm actually getting annoyed living in a world where everything is instant. It doesn't mean you're well prepared, it means you're constantly bombarded with information which you can't keep up with.

Honestly, advances in technology will never take the workload off, it will simply demand that we work harder to keep up.

Mad Iguana

February 11, 2011, 4:41 am

Is it just me, or has the era of the dotcom bubble returned, but focussed on a very limited number of companies?

&quot;Twitter is popular and we must be able to monetise anything that popular. Obviously the twits who run it haven't been able to, but we're facebook / google and we're good at that.&quot;

Hmmm.

And as for darkspark's question, the answer is how dates are spoken and written. In Europe (or anywhere else that uses a logical date structure) we usually say 5th June, so writing it 5/6 is a shorthand for that.

In the US they say June 5th, so writing 6/5 is the shorthand approach for that.

This is, at least, how it has been explained to me in one of the fantastic internet forums on the interwebs.

HarryGlass

February 11, 2011, 6:31 am

I can see the value of twitter to companies, but I never got why ordinary people use it. I always felt I was missing something, my standard reply has always been &quot;I am not interested in knowing what so and so had for lunch, or how often they go to the toilet, why would I want to use Twitter?&quot; But I was always half joking and assumed there was more to Twitter than that. Then the new iPad adverts arrived on the tube.

(shame we cannot put photos into comments - when is the new TR website coming!?!?!?)

And there you have it &quot;Just ate the best sandwich ever&quot;. The most pointless and inane post you could imagine and it's on an advert. Says it all really - I guess it's all the more appropriate coming on an iPad. So a product I have no interest in and a service I have no desire to use; ironic they might sell for 10 Billion and the iPad has sold so many millions; there's money in useless self indulgent junk!

alchobot

February 11, 2011, 6:32 am

Is it worth it, no!. Everything is now a vacuous value, it's only worth the publics perception and not bricks &amp; mortar etc. The other question is why is it worth so much, just advertising?.

rav

February 11, 2011, 1:58 pm

Twitter is just like the TR comments section, but on a mass scale and with topics expanding far beyond tech. It helps me keep up with news on all my interests and provides me with a good laugh at the same time.

I admittedly do tweet about my lunch too. But only the special meals and I like to include pics!

ChunkyMonkey

February 11, 2011, 4:04 pm

Is the product worth the money... no.

Are the subscribers worth the money... perhaps.

HarryGlass

February 12, 2011, 5:10 am

@rav: As they say &quot;I cannot believe you went there&quot;. I can understand companies using it, people discussing topics of interest, though the lunch thing is too much! :-/ I just find it so self indulgent. Also, I know too many people I don't agree with, it's bad enough seeing their socialist rantings on FB, tweets would kill me...

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